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English Faculty Publications and Presentations Department of English
11-1-2013 Herrick's Wild Civility Martin Corless-Smith Boise State University
This document was originally published by Edinburgh University Press in Ben Jonson Journal. Copyright restrictions may apply. DOI: 10.3366/ bjj.2013.0085 2
MODERN POETS ON SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY POETS
MARTIN CORLESS-SMITH
Herrick's Wild Civility
When one reaches for a book to take on a trip there might be any number of reasons for making a choice, but undoubtedly pre eminent for me is company. I find that more often than not I take Herrick. And I have wondered why this is. Part of the reason is that he is at once familiar, and so I bring the familiar with me as one might a friend, but he remains somewhat enigmatic. I have been reading his Hesperid.s for longer than I care to recall, and it is not as if I haven't finished reading it so much as it seems never to have finished. Part of this is the haphazard way I read, but a lot must be laid at the feet of Herrick and his idiosyncratic book, which meanders and restarts,' and even seems to end a good many times before it runs out of poems. Titles appear and reappear, he famously bids a solemn "farewell to sack"2 and perhaps less famously welcomes it back thirty pages later without a hint of contradiction. He acknowledges the great (clearly in a civil war era his dedications to the King are a political statement) as well as the unknown, tl,e historical alongside the fictional. His works wander
The Bell Jonson Journal 20.2 (2013): 273-282 DOl: 10.3366/bjj.2013.0085 © Edinburgh Uruversity Press www.euppublishing.com/bjj 2i4 BEN JONSON JOURNAL
from bawdy Anacreontics to scurrilous Martialian epigrams to Tlu lW The title Hesperides refers to both the nymph daughters of Hesperus (the evening star Venus) and the garden they protect. The garden is the orchard of Hera, where the nymphs protect her wedding gift from Gaia, a tree bearing golden apples. Speculati,m, as to the whereabouts of the garden vary, though it seems the location is often "to the west," giving the position the poignancy of the setting sun (think of the end of the Monarchy as the Slln going down). The garden brings echoes of Eden and Elysium, and might also reflect Herrick's own status as an "exiled Ovid" in the west county of Devon. The rest of the title, "or THE WORKS both Humane and Divine" purports to offer a translation, so that we see Hesperides as a collection of the poetical fruits of Herrick's labours. The title conflates the work with the guarding of that work, seeing the task of poetry as both making the work and jealously guarding a divine gift. It's important to remember that Herrick is both the creator and the custodian. Entitling the book "the Works" also hints at a posthumous collection,8 further endorsed by the frontispiece portrait, an etching of Herrick as a funeral bust. 111e message is that herein lies the worthy remains of our autl10r, his best part. This reading is endorsed by an epigram of Ovid "Effugient avidos C.rmina nostra Rogos" ("our songs will escape the greedy funeral pyres"), which is actually a very obvious misquote: Ovid's original using sola instead of nostra (most Early Modern editions used the imperfect "effugien!," will, rather than the modem preference for "defugient," do) in his elegy for Tlbullus, where his implication is the subtly different "Defugient avidos carmin. sola rogos"9 ("song alone escapes the greedy funeral pyre"). Herrick's inclusivity highlights the communality of the poetic garden, seeing his own task as guardian as well as practitioner. The songs are "ours" not Simply "his." He allies himself with Ovid, and thus with llbullus, which alongSide the funeral bust, show his poems stretching beyond his mortal span, reaching backwards and forwards in history. TIlls suggests Hesperides is an atemporal realm, a poetic Elysium or garden where Herrick and Ovid and Tibullus (as well as his beloved Jonson) can meet to drink heady inspiration from the muse's cup. Herrick's modesty (compared to Jonson's virile self promotion, or Milton's self-appointed grandeur) is nonetheless a conscious self-election to the pantheon. 276 BEN JONSON JOURNAL So let's look at one of his most popular lyrics, here in full: reappears iJ furough "ca furough the A SWEET disorder in the dress rhymes artf, Kindles in clothes a wantonness: (10th the ce A lawn about the shoulders thrown the110ntl off Into a fine distraction: ~glye An erring lace which here and there ~atonce di Enthrals the crimson stomacher: ~ch. And a A cuff neglectful, and thereby reframing oj Ribbons to flow confusedly': A winning wave (deserving note) In the tempestuous petticoat: A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility : Do more bewitch me than when art Is too precise in every part10 Delight is a pretty 14 line sonnet of rhyming couplets in regular iambic quadnuneter, with each line a complete clause. The meter offers only one "distraction," which must be pulled out of its usual three syllables, iI dis-trac-tion," into an unusual four" dls-tract-i-on" instead-something of a playful tugging of the word that might prepare us for the erring lace to follow. As is typical of Herrick there is plenty of alliteration (disorder, dress; kindles, doll,es; IIoth poems winning wave) and a great deal of consonance and assonance ("A alo.er migl lawn about the shoulders tluown"), with the syllable "in" playing ~artll in Jon: a strong role in holding the whole piece together sonically and woman too visually. Until the final "Do," each couplet begins with either the 'grace" as , article "a" or "an," with four of the following lines beginning with small detail: an "in" or Hen" sound, and the other lines at least echoing the IT' lre,lise on I sound. Until the final rhyme of "art" and "part" Herrick rhymes counter inttr a single-syllable word with a three-syllable word (or in one case deceptively "thereby" with "confusedly": a two-syllable word with a four). They are, in This has a ravishing effect, producing a sense of effortless flourish while embo at the end of earn couplet, almost as if we see the modest single neglect" is n syllable unfurl into extravagance: U dress" becomes "wantonness." Ielue to a sl Throughout, the idea of the ribbon or the lace unraveling becomes In his trea the play of the syllables, the "es" of "dress" and "wantonness" oreslraine< Herrick's Wild Civility 277 reappears in "deserving" and weaves into "tempestuous,'1 and through "careless" where the lies" becomes liS" and continues through the "shoe~string/, "see" and ('civility.1f Every IIpare( rhymes artfully, "ribbon" finds kinship in proximity to "winning" (with the central doubling of consonants), and "enthralls," where the "on" off rhymes with the "en". The play of the whole is at once seemingly effortless and intricately precise; the dress of the lover is at once disheveled, and at the same time precisely arranged as such. And as such the poem is an ars poetica. The poem is itself a reframing of a Jonson lyric: Still to be neat, still to be dressed, As you were going to a feast; Still to be powdered, still perfumed: Lady, it is to be presumed, Though art's hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound. Give me a look, give me a face ;ular That makes simplicity a grace; leter Robes loosely flowing, hair as free: ISUa! Such sweet neglect more taketh me, -on" Than all the adulteries of art: ught They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.1J mel :hes; Both poems shift from a description of a preference for the way ("A a lover might dress to make a declaration on art. TI1e mention of ling "art" in Jonson appears as the art of seduction, over-played by a and woman too obvious in her decoration. But Jonson's references to the "grace" as well as 11 art,fI in a poem about revealing the truth in .ith small details, flags an underlying message. A longer, more showy 'PY" treatise on his declared preference for simplicity in art would be mes counter intuitive. Both poems seduce by understatement. Both are :ase deceptively simple. And both lyrics deceive if we under read them. They are, in that, somewhat paradoxical: they argue for simplicity while embodying a hidden subtlety. Jonson's paradox of "sweet neglect" is not as strident as Herrick's ((wild civility/II but both offer a clue to a shared ideology. In his treatise Orator Cicero outlines the true "Attic" style, which is restrained and plain. Indeed, "the audience ... are sure they 278 DONjONSONjOURNAL can speak in that fashion."12 Here we see a description of the o ideal style that rhymes with Jonson's apparent simplicity. But rhet Cicero continues in language that seems even more reminiscent non of Herrick when he suggests that speech should "be loose but und not rambliog; so that it may be seen to move freely but not to and wander without restraint."" The ribbons and stomacher offer just the such a freedom and restraint in Herrick's Delight. The restraint con is both linguistic and moral: "For the short and concise clauses The must not be handled carelessly, but there is such a thing even eve fl as careful negligence," Cicero IS Ifcareful negligence is Jonson's syn "sweet neglect" and Herrick's "wild civility." But even mOre telling drir is Cicero's supportiog example for this paradoxical neglect: "Just as inh some women are said to be handsom.e when unadorned -this very pos lack or ornament becomes them - so this plain style gives pleasure the even when unembellished."" The precedent is well established sue then to see plaia style in language exemplified with a description ver of a woman's clothing. And of course there are echoes elsewhere, to J such as Ovid's Amore, xiv where he describes his waking lover: ag "tum quoque erat neclecta decens, ut Threcia Bacchell15 (lieven pIa then, in her neglect, she was comely, like a l1uacian Bacchante"). The image of the woman appearing to her lover in dishabille Jor allows for her subtle awareness at being noticed. Cicero's audience COl is lead to feel the oration is artless, just as the lover is lead to an believe the woman's look is unself-conscious. The truth is they are te~ artful, without being artificial. The paradox of "neglecta decens" !hi is more natural than any artificial makeup, "imitating that orderly be disorder, which is common in nature,"16 The artifice in Herrick and of Jonson is to produce plaio-seeming lyrics that address the simple of nahIra! beauty of nahlre and women, but are in fact supremely hl crafted. Herrick's Delight is itself exemplary of his "wild civility," pc an idea he repeats throughout the Hesperides in "To Musick, to L, becalme a sweet-sick-youth,"17 II Art above Nature, to Julia,"IS er and "What kiod of Mistresse he would have. "19 Three of the d, four poems refer directly to the dress and habits of his lovers, It although lovers io Herrick are always idealized figures, possibly It the muse and clearly offered as literary tropes. "Wild civility" b, describes the art by which a lover dresses (and lUldresses) and e, at the same time it describes the way an ideal poem might be ir fashioned. o i Herrick's Wild Civility 279 (~ Of course the concept of "wild civility" is more U,an classical i;sur rhetoric, and the image of a loosely dressed lover appeals to a iscepi non-puritanical age, hearkening back to a time before the regime 'bUI lmder which Herrick is writing. Delight obviously echoes Jonson, lot 10 and looks to the time of the Monarchy, nostalgically revisioning ~rjusl the period as a Golden Age. But the Golden Age is a pastoral ;I!ainl convention, a literary device, more than it is any historical period. lau~s TI,e tone of the book is often nostalgic, but more often than not the ~ ~cn events seem to be literary as much as historical, and the convivial i l)(6nls symposiastic references bring Anacreon to life for an evening of I t~pkg drink, as vividly as they bring Jonson back from the dead to Jusr" mhabit the Apollo Room. The implication of the Hesperidrs as a ~ve1)' posthumous work seems to suggest that more has been lost with leaslljE the civil war than the King. A link to the court is cut off and poets blis~ such as Herrick are now in exile, a fate akin to death. We have a :npnon version of the fall of Rome, here and now in England. And it is up I 'Whe~, to Herrick (the pre-eminent disciple of Jonson) to provide a place, ~ lov~ r: a garden, where poets may still meet. Hrsperidcs is such a meeting rev~ place, where Herrick and his poetic forebears mingle and exchange. As we have seen Hesperides is filled with homages to Ovid and Jonson, with allusions to and imitations of poets classical and contemporaneous. Herrick's .imitations are not merely exercises of a minor poetaster, the idea ofimitation acknowledges the rhetorical teachings of Cicero and Dionysius of Halicarnassus,'o but more than that it is an instant of recitation and resuscitation. Ovid lives because we read him. Jonson lives in the vivid plain English lines of his songs. Herrick's style is self-consciously imitative, not out of failure of imagination, but out of overwhelming gratitude and humility. But one should not imagine for one minute that Herrick's poems are shallow copies, anymore than one should imagine Leonardo's sketches from Verrocchio limited his own artistic endeavors. All poetry is a balance of imitation and imaginative deviation, or if you prefer a balance between rules and unruliness. It must in someway resemble previous poetry to be read as such. It must differ to be seen as worthy of the title. All poetry moves between these poles, Herrick's "civility" is surely his classical education. His "wildness" is that which breathes freshness and inspiration into and out of the work of his forebears to make his own. Poetry's space is the gap between the paradox of "wild" 280 BEN JONSON JOURNAL ~dl who i and "civil." When Horace describes his poe t in Ode xxxiv: "Parcu, /l2l fjveorsixc dllOrum cultor et infrequens l / insanientis dum sapientiae ("I, ~rrt)elf. a chary and infrequ 1. The book has two tin .., followed very closely by nine individual "opening" poems that all describe what the book is, where it should be ". Hetrick's Wild Civility WI read, who it is for, and four hundred pages later it "closes" still " M I 282 BEN JONSON JOURNAL ~ http://i'lrchive,org/stream/lysiaslambOOlysiuoft/lysiaslambOOlysiuoft_ divu.txt ~ 21. Horace, Odes alld Epodes, trans. C. E. Bennett (Cambridge, MA: I Harvard University Press, 1968), 90. 22. And it is 11 very English garden in the style of William Kent or I Charles Bridgeman, appearing at once natural and cultivated. - Ii ~ s~' I The em I David Cambri I Physic< I atlracn spine; I printin I rather I his ent Font si is veT) a grea textm; amply inforn and v new I the c( Unfor we.ltl Electr The B, 001:1 ©Edil www.